Important: This isn’t a “please unlock <thread>” post. There’s actualy a point… in there somewhere 
Far be it from me to dispute a decision done by Anet’s watchful moderators, however, I do have a concern about locking certain threads posted by representatives of some of GW2’s communities (I have a single one in mind but I wont link to a locked thread for obvious reasons)
The reasoning given for the lockdown of those threads is that there wasn’t enough debate and people were just adding “+1” in the comments. But surely you understand why that was the case, right?
Sure, the OPs wrote “This is <community>’s stance on <so and so>”, but we understand how forums work, and how the hottest threads with the largest amounts of comments get most attention from Arenanet. And because of that, we comment simply to let the people who are reading those posts know that it isn’t just a pointless post. And the reason we’re not furthering the debate in the forums is because these posts have been constructed with a lot of debate and consideration done prior to posting. These weren’t just your regular “I’ve had a thought” posts (like this one is), these were thought-through, checked and rechecked and meticulously and concisely constructed posts (unlike this one).
There’s a difference between someone writing “500 people feel like this” and actually seeing those 500 people adding “Yes, I do feel like this”, and I think by locking these threads, the moderators are effectively preventing us from adding our names / voices to those posts. And I think it’s doing more harm than good overall, since these posts still represent large communities of several hundred people, and instead of condensing all our opinions to a single thread (which is the moderators’ reasoning behind most of their thread lockdowns), you’re
a) scattering these posts into a chaotic mess that makes the job of whoever’s analysing the community’s concerns even more difficult, because the opinions of these people do not go away, they’re just expressed through different means
b) creating a wave of negativity spreading out from those who feel silenced / ignored, and causing general disillusionment about the game, the forums, Anet, etc
I’m not saying you should unlock the threads, and I’m not saying you haven’t been taking this in consideration, I just want to make sure you are, and that you understand our motives behind posting in those threads in the way we have been.
P.S.: By this point, you must be aware of the general “police state” opinion people have about your forums, right? I mean, maybe it’s time to consider a new direction? Together for a brighter tomorrow / S2 and all that?
P.P.S.: Wow I did not mean this post to be this long.
